David Letterman: "I'm in hell"

David Letterman has opened up about how his blackmail scandal in 2009 sent him spiralling into depression.

Letterman, who ended his 22-year run with the Late Show in May 2015, told trusted members of his inner circle about his battles during the time CBS producer Robert Halderman tried to extort him for $2million. 

The CBS News producer had come across a diary detailing that the legendary comedian was having an affair with his assistant, Stephanie Birkitt, and said he was planning to turn the revelation into a screenplay if he was not paid.

'I'm in hell. I will always be in hell until the day after, when I will go to hell,' he reportedly told Late Show writer Steve Young, as they were preparing a monologue in which Letterman revealed all about the blackmail attempt to his audience, an excerpt of the book obtained by People Magazine reads.

During the now-infamous opening of his show on October 1, 2009, Letterman told the audience, 'I have a little story to tell you', before detailing how he found a package from Halderman that contained a letter that read: 'I know that you do some terrible, terrible, things.'

Later in the piece, Letterman confessed to his audience: 'I have had sex with women who work for me.'

The new biography then details just how deeply the comedian fell into depression.

'It was akin to having killed your family in a car crash. It was like that to me,' Letterman told New York Times reporter and the book's author Jason Zinoman, People reports.

'I was afraid my family was gone.'

Zinoman's book then goes into detail about a behind-the-scenes meeting Letterman had with his Late Show staff after his intense on-air confession.

The veteran host told the author he used the chat as a way to: 'cope with and avoid his personal life'. 

'I was looking for a refuge. Whether they knew it or not, [my staffers] were being used to support me,' Letterman said, People's excerpt reads.

'I didn’t want to go outside. Outside I was scared. Scared as I’ve ever been in my life. The show was endlessly helpful.'

In previous interviews, Letterman admitted he would not have been shocked to lose his job with CBS over the scandal.

'Looking at it now, yes, I think they would have had good reason to fire me,' he told the New York Times in 2015.

'But at the time, I was largely ignorant as to what, really, I had done. It just seemed like, OK, well, here’s somebody who had an intimate relationship with somebody he shouldn’t have had an intimate relationship with.'

Halderman was ultimately charged with first-degree attempted grand larceny over the attempted blackmail.

This article was first published on dailymail.co.uk and is republished here with permission.